


words aren't that hard

by CopperCaravan



Series: Fallout Prompt Fills [3]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Codename: Tens, F/M, Fluff, Non-Sexual Intimacy, brief mention of racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 18:08:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6715708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a fill for a tumblr prompt: Hancock/Tens (f!sole) + "I love you" in a blissful sigh as you fall asleep</p>
            </blockquote>





	words aren't that hard

**Author's Note:**

> For those not familiar with my Sole, she wasn't a lawyer, she was black-ops and has no civilian socializing, which explains a lot of her issues. (Also, I finally wrote one from her pov, so... yeah, here it is.)

“I love you.”

Sleep’s been toying with them tonight, coming and going, as fitful as the silence of the Wastes. And she isn’t quite sure she’s actually heard him, so quiet as it was.

But she _feels_ it, _knows_ it—has known it—long before the words come. In the sigh of his breath against her shoulder at night. In the weight of his arm around her waist and the heat of his body behind her. In knowing his gun is trained on those before her. In the words he offers when she can’t find them and the support he gives when she doesn’t think she can stand.

Maybe he didn’t say it. Maybe she’s dreaming. But that hardly makes a difference.

All that time she spent as a civilian and all she has to show for it is Codsworth teaching her to scramble eggs. She learned to run a dish washer. She learned she was better off just hanging clothes to dry. She learned that Nate does not like store brand spaghetti sauce. And what the fuck good does any of that shit do her now?

She couldn’t ever grasp the other things people just expected her to know—Nate, the neighbours, the over-friendly families of other vets at every VA event Nate dragged her to. She was supposed to know how to answer absent niceties. She was supposed to know when to come to a “get-together” five minutes late or five minutes early or right on time even though she never wanted to go to them at all. She was supposed to know how to respond to the constant informal touches of people she barely knew. She was supposed to know how to answer questions like “who does your hair” and “don’t you wish those commies would just go back to their own country?” But she’d just blush and stammer and say things wrong and they’d pay her back with narrowed eyes and cocked brows and scowling lips, looks that made her wither in place like a dying plant. She felt like that a lot, actually—like a potted plant just shrivelling up, though not for lack of water or sun or dirt. It was something else that was missing: not just the _work,_ but her team, the people she knew, the people she’d spent seventeen years learning and fighting beside. The rules, if you could even really call them that, had been simple and she’d known them then. But this other world? With its handshakes and “how are you’s” and whispering behind hands in the middle of a crowded room? She just... never got the hang of it.

The rules in the Wasteland are the same sometimes, no matter how different things are. People expect a certain level of social know-how and she can’t meet those expectations. Doesn’t know how to barter or deal with political machinations or even get through an introduction without stuttering and grasping for words she knows she knows. (“Oh, I’m just a... just... what’s that word, John? The buzzards. You know? The collecting, the bits and pieces?” “Scavenger.” “ _Scavenger._ Goddammit, I knew that one.”)

But he doesn’t care that she can’t remember which words she knows or the different way she knows them. A rocky start, they’d had. But after that... well, after that, he’d loved her.

She turns over, tries to be slow so she doesn’t wake him, so she doesn’t make the bed shift with her weight. But whether he’s asleep or not, he tightens his grip around her waist, lifts his chin as she buries her face in his neck. He adjusts for her, as he always does. He knows what she’s doing, where she’s going next, because he knows _her._ And he knows her because he loves her. People seem to think it works the other way ‘round but it doesn’t. People don’t bother to know her unless they love her. That’s another thing she learned, the most important one.

“I love you too.”


End file.
